Soccer in the Streets

Location

United States

Key achievement

Employing more than 60 former participants in the organisation

Soccer in the Streets

Network Member

Soccer in the Streets empowers underserved youth through soccer, character development, mentoring, and employability programs. Since launching in 1989, Soccer in the Streets has pioneered the use of soccer for social change. Throughout the 1990's, we led the way in conducting soccer clinics in urban and under served communities, especially during the 1994 and 1998 FIFA World Cups and the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup. In Atlanta, we have emerged from challenging economic times. We are in a growth mode – doubling the number of youth being served since 2009. With prominent support from the Coca-Cola Foundation and the FIFA Football For Hope movement, as well as personal donations from charitable individuals through the “Goal For Their Future” campaign, we launched School of Life – the pinnacle initiative of Soccer in the Streets. Narrowing our focus has enabled us to double the number of kids employed in each subsequent year since 2010.

We are an organization that serves in a holistic, comprehensive and in-depth way, reaching kids on the field, in small-group classroom sessions, through hands-on experiences and activities, and through participation in a youth advisory council. We are extremely efficient, making great use of the resources we’ve been given to achieve the mission. This is demonstrated by our growth at a time others in the field have struggled to survive. We have mastered “simple.” We’ve boiled down the benefits of kids playing soccer to its essence and expanded it to many other aspects of the kids’ lives. We are experts at being flexible and nimble, constantly examining our role and finding a niche, anticipating the needs of kids and listening to them to help us determine the direction in which we need to go to best serve them.